My Notes: GDC 2014 – Day 3 – Lectures & Cable Car

The GDC 2014 in San Francisco happened one month ago and I am going to bring you a post every day like a diary for the next few days =)
This was my first GDC in the States and I took some pictures and wrote a lot of notes about my daily stuff, the talks / lectures and what I have experienced.

 It’s a beautiful Tuesday and the jetlag had me totally… I woke up at about 5 am but today, the breakfast was amazing!

We had breakfast at Lori’s Diner and a bit time left to enjoy our walk to the Moscone Center and hop into a GameStop.

As we arrived our group split up and everybody was going tho their lectures… I thought of visiting the Unity Talk but then I saw this row….

After the first lectures (you can find them at the end of the post) I had lunch and decided to grab a soup an a breadbowl… some friends recommended it and it was pretty good, especially because I ate it in the beautiful park (Yerba Buena Gardens).

All of my todays talks were Producing talks (obviously I attended the Producing Summit), there were cool talk not everything new but its pretty cool to get in touch with other people who do the same and exchange some experiences.
As a Producer you need to know how to handle situation and your biggest learnings are comming from experience and by time, so sharing knowledge is even more important for me.

Because we all were so tired (guys from Travian) we decided to have a calm evening by riding the cablecar and eating something at the piers and just walk around a little.
Btw. I had a super delicious crab at Fishermens Grotto but I was a bit curious, I was the only one who had seafood… maybe it’s no food for everybody.

Sessionlist + Notes:

I’ll link all sessions to the GDC-Vault, if possible to the free stuff.
All notes are my private quick notes, ask me if i need to clarify them.

•  Producer 101: Skilltest for Producers
  • Pretty basic stuff
  • Fresh Bacon at start of the presentation (srsly)
  • The slides later were to packed with information
  • It wasn’t clear to whom hes speaking… newbies or experts
• People management survival guide
  • Feedback cycles
  • One on ones an a regular basis
  • Don’t let small issues wait until they get big
  • Plan with short- mid and long term goals
  • Also set up personal and work goals
  • Post mortems
  • Team retro and team surveys
  • Skip level one on ones, organize meetings between employees and your boss
  • Know your employees, get to know their skill set even if it takes a lot of time
  • don’t underestimate expectation management, make clear what your expectations are and tell them if they don’t match
  • Level professions by those with the expertise
  • Trust your people and trust their role
  • Talk to the information hub in your team and let them know what they are and how they should work with that knowledge
• Communication Jiu-Jitsu
  • Best talk of the day by Larry Seal, if not of the whole conference.
  • Just have a look at his talk, my notes are not good to describe the session.
• Producer 101: Business
  • A cool talk which talk about a lot of things you need to know for doing business as a Producer
  • From low to high level interesting
  • Subjective not objective
  • Success is not predictable
  • Wannabe business
    • Lots of competition
    • Barriers to entry are…
  • Teams make games
    • Mix skills
    • Public association with individuals less common
  • Technically cutting edge
    • A not well understood process
    • Not consistent across developer
    • Virgin teams unlikely to succeed
    • Unfinished is often worthless
    • Very rapid change
  • Marginal costs of goods is zero
  • Hit driven
    • Common for creative products
    • Uneven revenue distribution
    • Difficult finance prediction
    • Repeatability is harder
  • Industry ecosystem
    • Developer
  • Complicated network
    • A lot of outsourcers for nearly everything
  • Work for hire vs. Own IP exploitation
    • Exactly the same function
    • Also radically different business
  • Get knowledge about basic accounting finance stuff
  • Business planning
    • Business models are simulations
    • Change variables
  • Show me the money
    • Friends and family
    • Angels
    • V.C.s
  • Own IP exploitation is high Return
  • Works fort hier is Low risk
  • Project finance
  • Game creation diamond
    • Cost
    • Time
    • Budget
    • Scope
  • Quality vs scope
    • Scaling up a high quality game is easier than making a bloated up game fun
  • Marketing
    • Understand the audience better than they do
  • Analytics led iteration
    • Cutting edge marketing
  • Game design is marketing
    • Marketing is the function of optimizing user satisfaction
  • Being in the loop
    • Marketing is a critical business function
  • Brand
    • You stand and fall with your brand
  • Corporate and product branding
    • Different brand values required
• Producer Panel
  • Open panel for all kind of Producing related Questions
• Why whales sing: Heavy spenders drive virality and retention
  • Get slides, cool charts, mainly for mobile
  • Its about the heavy spender and that they are highly engaged to find, see and even create videos and content for your game
  • You want to attract those player and should use these medias
  • They like discovering games via (online) word of mouth
  • Bragging rights and see / show off to other player
  • Communities appeal strongly to all type of players
  • They prefer to use nicknames and avatars
  • They want to play competitively